Disappointingly, Déjà Vu not a Glitch in the Matrix

I hate to break it to all you Keanu Reeves fans out there, but a study from Colorado State University suggests that déjà vu is not what “happens when they change something” in the Matrix. Associate Professor of Psychology Anne Cleary used virtual reality to evoke déjà vu in the lab. The research, published in June in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, showed that déjà vu tended to occur when people viewed a virtual scene with a similar layout to a previously seen scene, but failed to recall the former scene.

(A) The eMagin z800 3D head-mounted display (HMD); head-tracking enables immersive viewing of each scene through the turning of one’s head tolook around and 3D presentation allows for depth perception. (B) Sample 2D screenshots of configurally similar scenes (study on left; test on right). Though screenshots are 2D, the actual scenes were presented in stereographic 3D; each illustration represents only a portion of theentire scene, as each could be viewed immersively by turning one’s head or body to look left, right, up or down.From: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810012000049

Anne Cleary describes her research in a short video, and Michio Kaku discusses the alternative but unlikely possibility of déjà vu in the multiverse.